1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to lubricant compositions. More particularly, it relates to a group of N-alkoxyalkylenediamine amides and to their use in lubricants as multipurpose additives, i.e., as friction reducers, antioxidants and fuel consumption reducers. The invention is especially concerned with internal combustion engines.
2. Discussion of Related Art
As those skilled in this art know, additives impart special properties to lubricants. They may give the lubricants new properties or they may enhance properties already present. One property all lubricants have in common is the reduction of friction between materials in contact. Nonetheless, the art constantly seeks new materials to enhance such friction properties.
A lubricant, even without additives, when used in an internal combustion engine, for example, will not only reduce friction, but in the process will also reduce consumption of the fuel required to run it. When oils appeared to be inexhaustable, and cheap, minimum attention was given to developing additives for the specific purpose of enhancing frictional properties. Instead, most of the advances in this area came as a result of additives being placed in lubricants for other purposes. However, recent events have spurred research programs designed specifically to find materials capable of enhancing the ability of a lubricant to reduce friction.
We have in our work found that there is no dependable correlation between friction reducing properties of an additive and its ability to correspondingly further reduce fuel consumption in an engine. Further, one cannot predict with absolute certainty from the ability of an additive to reduce friction that it will also act to decreae fuel consumption. Thus, even though the use of amides in lubricants is known (see U.S. Pat. No. 3,884,822, for example, which discloses lubricants containing the product of reaction between an aminopyridine and oleic acid), no art teaches or suggests that the amides of this invention are useful for the purposes disclosed herein.